STORMONT’S MOST senior politicians have rounded on Northern Secretary Owen Paterson on foot of a speech he made in Dublin.
Both the North’s First Minister, Peter Robinson, and Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness, sharply criticised Mr Paterson for the speech, in which he said the North was still “deeply divided”.
Mr Paterson was addressing the Institute of International and European Affairs last Thursday when he expressed “profound” disappointment with the Stormont Executive in relation to difficulties over the cohesion, sharing and integration strategy.
The strategy has been beset by problems and negotiations were abandoned by the Alliance Party in May. On the same day as Mr Paterson’s speech, the Ulster Unionist Party announced it would also be leaving the working group. Ironically, the strategy is aimed at promoting better community relations and greater integration for a “shared future”.
In his wide-ranging speech entitled “British-Irish relations in the 21st century”, Mr Paterson said Stormont needed to move towards a more normal system of government, with an opposition, plus an end to dual mandates.
Although politics in the North was “more stable than at any time in over a generation”, more needed to be done regarding a shared future. “We cannot have a Northern Ireland in which everything is carved up on sectarian grounds,” he said.
“For all the progress in recent years,” he continued, “Northern Ireland remains at many levels a deeply divided society.”
However the North’s First Minister and Deputy First Minister rejected his comments.
Mr McGuinness said it was “ironic” that Mr Paterson had chosen to criticise the Executive “on the day after a significant statement from Peter Robinson and myself outlining agreement across a whole range of issues. Either Mr Paterson is so detached from politics here that he missed this statement, or he chose simply to ignore it for his own political reasons,” Mr Guinness added.
Mr Robinson said such “highly political comments are unfortunate given the significant progress that has been made across a range of policy areas this week”.
This included agreement on the setting up of a board to oversee the development of the former Maze prison as a conflict-resolution centre and the appointment of a single victims commissioner.
The First Minister added it was “rich for Mr Paterson to lecture people in Northern Ireland about good government” when the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition in London was “stumbling from one crisis to the next”.